An Article by: 

Ben Tanosborn 

In my mind you don’t trot around the world creating havoc and taking peoples’ lives to defend your “envied freedoms.”  For all the shame we may rightly accumulate as we send young people to die for our elite’s lust for power and greed, we don’t have to lie to our enlisted military by mockingly making them martyrs and heroes when, sadly, they are just being played for chumps.  Our freedoms and rights need to be protected, but right here, not in some battlefield or neighborhood somewhere in the Middle East. And we, Americans, have done a very poor job in fighting domestically to preserve them.

A couple of mornings ago a thought occurred to me just as I was reading an article by H. Josef Hebert (AP) on how Bush rhetoric on energy strayed from the facts.  Of course, it wasn’t the headline that caught my eye; as I see it, Bush rhetoric on most everything has always been light years away from the facts!  But it was the mere thought of this persistent and hopeless liar, that went off like a flash – and just like there is a liar ready to divert any and all facts from a given story, or there is a vice for every virtue, or an antonym at the opposite end of a synonym, or even that science fiction idea of parallel universes, why can’t we come up with a set of anti-freedoms, one that can quantify the degree to which we, Americans, have become complacently enslaved?

During the six plus years since 9/11 and the passage of the pseudo-patriotic Patriot Act, we have slowly become aware of fundamental and diminutional changes to Americans’ constitutional rights under this embryo-fascist government embodied by the faith-based Bush administration, and a condescending, peoples’ unrepresentative Congress. 

Freedoms of association, information and unreasonable search; as well as rights to liberty, legal representation, and a speedy and public trial… all were confiscated and warehoused – only borrowed, ‘mind you – so as to relieve us from our heavy load of fear and make us all think we’re assisting in “terror investigation.” Notice that I haven’t included “freedom of speech” in the list although the government may prosecute librarians and other record keepers if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.  Actually the freedom of speech, or expression, had long been under attack almost two generations before George W. Bush came to the political scene… and it was done without the aid of any specific legislation.    

To journalists and commentators, the first freedom that comes to mind is an easy one: freedom of speech or expression.  For those of us left with the option of writing for our peers and a compressed audience of progressives, freethinking coreligionists, plus the occasional lost souls who might be reading us as result of boring curiosity or perhaps cyber-randomness, we know that freedom of expression is for the most part a cruel hoax.  No, it isn’t that we aren’t free to write (or say) what we please; it’s just that such writing means very little if it cannot be readily accessed, be available to a mainstream audience; and people must travel to the underground of verboten ideas that could never make it through the red-white-and-blue strainer of our nation’s unfree corporate press.

Soon after World War II, to keep our country uninfected from the diseases of that malignant world of foreign socio-political ideas, our freedom of expression was quietly modified without much planning or fanfare to include patriotic clarifications and purifications via a filtering layer added to the strainer, one capable of removing all foreign viruses that could challenge the “American way of life.”  These impressions have been very meticulously carved in the American psyche for almost three generations, and they render any deviation from capitalism or individualism – the way we define them – as sacrilegious; down and out heresy.  The Spanish Inquisition of 1478 had been de facto transplanted to America, in both cases to preserve the faith (Christianity for the Spaniards, and Americanism for the Americans) and with it the nation’s unity.  In fact, it isn’t just Socialism that Americans have been taught to hate and also to ridicule, but anything that is part of, or prefixed by, the word social; or another neutral word, welfare, which for no good reason has lost its primary meaning of well-being in the US.  

Our citizens must be guarded against all those foreign social remedies that seem to plague much of the industrialized world, particularly those Northern European countries; just how sick can those forsaken foreigners be when they exchange an indomitable and survivalist spirit for a system of welfare from cradle to grave?  Obviously Elitist America is willing to throw overboard half or more of Americans to the seas of the Third World in its globalization attempt.

Someone told me the other day that the Statue of Liberty should have Emma Lazarus’ poem on that bronze plaque welcoming the tired and the poor, re-inscribed with the new reality… “Welcome to America, Land of Human Recycling.”  Grotesque perhaps, but true!  And all because we have surrendered the free flow of ideas in our nation, our true freedom of expression, with the captivity of impression of an immutable Americanism unable to grow and transform.

Like birds in a cage Americans are free to flutter, but haven’t we been forced into economic and political submission with the control held by an elite few?
 

Tags: democracy, empire, Global
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An Article by:

Ben Tanosborn

 Change… holy change!  If only we could be blessed with a light rain from the heavens that would wash away our prejudices, greed and dissipating wastefulness.  Cleansed, Americans could then become one whole people instead of the many fractions that now make up this nation of diversity; diversity not just in people but also in rights, hopes and expectations.
 

Let there be no mistake, ours is a nation where indignation and ill will run much deeper than we would like to believe, or dare broadcast for everyone to hear; and it is these real life-size grievances never addressed fully or with candor – not just imagined ones – that prevent us from attaining national cohesiveness.  Instead, all we have done from time immemorial is to lie to ourselves and to others… just by adding patches.  Ours has never been a Fourth of July America, the one that our state department sells to the world, but a nation which has provided both: opportunity for some to realize a so-called American dream and, for others, the condemnation to relive an American nightmare.
 

Patches that cover up the problems of race, economic inequality and wantonly obscene self-indulgence are constantly being affixed to the American psyche as if telling us all that everything is fine with no reason to worry or complain.  So truth is patched with lies time and again, as we are all asked to join in that proud chorus of “God Bless America,”  an America that really belongs to a few, although most of us are deceived into adopting it as our very own.  And the bullshit builds up, as do the patches, until the boiling cauldron overflows… then, the patches temporarily disappear and we come to blows.
 

Last week the media did its thing, and presented us with a reverend Wright made to look more like an irreverent Wrong exalting his black congregation with a blasphemous  “God Damn America.”  No American flag pin adorning his clerical garb, just words of anger and rancor coming from his mouth.  An embittered Christian pastor who tells it like he sees it… and that for tens of millions is really the America they live in and not the mythical America that we seem to be patriotically proud of.  By so doing, Rev. Wright created political problems for a member of his flock, Senator Barack Obama, and his quest for the Democratic nomination… and the chance to occupy the White House.
 

Obama’s denunciation of Rev. Wright was one of form as well as substance, but it did appear as a conditional denunciation to the existing racial problems that still afflict this nation.  And that is something that most conservative Americans just don’t tolerate… it has to be an unconditional denunciation, and total adherence to the philosophy that “America does no wrong,” or it’s no denunciation at all.
 

Even if one questions Obama’s path and ability to bring real change to America, he does appear as a person of reason and honor… unlike most other politicians; and that, of course, will hurt his chances of being nominated by his party; and, if nominated, of being elected.  After all, he’ll be portrayed as just a letter away from the founding father of Al Qaeda.  The lies and denigration against aspiring-president Obama will be in full force and the fascist bloodhounds will be combing the woods and the marshes looking for that half-Negro terrorist who dares tell us that we have racial problems to solve.  It has already started.  In this morning local paper, The Oregonian, an uncalled for salvo was dishonorably discharged by a reader: “Barack Obama stands by Rev. Wright with glee.  President he should not be.”  Jubilant delight not from Obama but from the Rovesque nincompoop who wrote such trash!  But that’s what the senator will get, non-stop, if and when he receives the Democratic nomination to run against John McCain.
 

Black rage in America is real, very real, even if it remains patched.  The American judicial-prison system is a disgrace, one which affects blacks uniquely and disproportionately, as do other institutions.  When Mainstream White America, the America that controls power, fails to address these problems, should people act surprised if criminal trials really become political trials, such as O.J. Simpson’s or Mumia Abu-Jamal’s?
 

We have only touched on racial resentment – which affects more than just blacks – but it applies with an ever increasing force to the broadening economic inequality and the accelerating disappearance of the middle class.  Racial and economic rage affecting the “Other America” is likely to grow in the next few years attaining super-majority status to demand drastic social, economic and political change in this land of ours.   
 

It is not double vision that makes us see two Americas… it is only political blindness that makes us see only one.  Distance between the two Americas needs to be dramatically narrowed or we shall continue to remain the United States of Resentment, and not the United States of America we should strive to be.

     

Tags: american dream, Ben Tanosborn, corporations, economics, Global, government, National, politics, Social Change
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An Article by:

By Steve Hammons

As Barack Obama continues to move ahead in the Democratic presidential primaries, we note that ethnic background and gender still seem to be playing important and interesting roles.

The many domestic and foreign affairs issues we face, such as the candidates’ positions on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, are also key parts of the debates and campaigns.

According to recent surveys and demographic studies, Hillary Clinton’s support, in part, comes from white women and older Democrats.

Reasons for this seem obvious.

Some white women see one of their own and feel that giving her support is appropriate. They identify with her. This seems like a natural response.

Older Democrats may feel comfortable with “another Clinton” and, should we say it? – they might feel more comfortable voting for an all-white candidate. This may be a factor for some Democrats with lower educational levels, which is also a group supporting Clinton to some degree.

Obama gets support from younger voters and increasingly from men. Since Obama is a relatively young father of two young kids, these voters might naturally identify with him. His youthful manner might also be attractive.

Men probably identify with him not just because he is a male, but because he is a male who appears to be admirable and a “regular guy.”

INVASION, OCCUPATION OF IRAQ

Some of the main differences between Obama and Clinton, of course, are their positions and actions regarding the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Many Americans now believe that intelligence information was inaccurate about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There is significant evidence that indicates this was intentional on the part of some people within the Bush administration and those connected to it.

Many people believe that the Bush administration was willing to send our troops to Iraq, to die and be terribly injured, for access oil, to assist other governments in the Middle East and to “finish the job” that former president George H.W. Bush wisely did not undertake – invading and taking over Iraq.

Some researchers say there were those in and associated with the Bush administration who wanted to pour monies of the U.S. Treasury into war profiteering and those who wanted to establish permanent U.S. bases in Iraq to influence and police the Middle East region for decades to come.

It has been said that there were Bush administration people and others who wanted to show they were “macho” – the “chicken hawks” – even though few of them had ever served in combat environments themselves. Many even avoided military service in Korea and Vietnam.

Other aspects of the invasion and occupation seemed to indicate the huge egos and incompetence of those associated with the Bush administration.

The deceptive and dishonorable nature of some of these players also seems evident to many people.

We have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the invasion and occupation of Iraq. This has been, in large part, borrowed money. There are many hidden costs as well.

The Bush administration’s Iraq fiasco has nearly broken our Army, Army Reserve, National Guard and has broken the bodies, minds and spirits of many good American soldiers, Marines and their families.

According to some research, hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, including children, have been killed as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Many more have been terribly injured.

Though she may not have intended all of these results, this is what Hillary Clinton supported when she voted to authorize military action by the Bush administration against Iraq.

This is what Barack Obama opposed.

STIRRING THE MELTING POT

Obama’s support includes African-Americans. This is not surprising since his father was from Kenya, Africa.

Obama’s father and mother were divorced when he was two years old.

After the divorce, his father went on to get a Ph.D. from Harvard in economics and then returned to Kenya to pursue a career there.

Obama spend formative childhood and teen years in Hawaii, and was raised by his mother and her parents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who were originally from Wichita, Kansas.

Obama has noted that his grandfather, Stanley Dunham, joined the Army in WWII after Pearl Harbor and served under Gen. George Patton in Europe. Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn, worked on a bomber assembly line during the war.

This reminds us that it can be fairly and accurately said that Obama is a mixed-ethnicity American. He straddles a sometimes wide divide of Americans from different ethnic backgrounds.

But, he is not the only one. Nowadays, after many generations of mixing the different ethnic groups of people in the U.S., there are millions of mixed-ethnicity Americans.

If your family has some Scottish, Cherokee and Swedish, you have a mixed-ethnicity. Are you part African, part English with maybe some Dutch in the family tree? Same thing. Was great-grandma half-Mexican and grampa Joe part-Navajo? Join the club.

Obama is in good company here.

Along these lines, Hispanics seem to be a swing vote of sorts in the Democratic primaries. Many Mexican-Americans and African-Americans sometimes compete for the same turf, whether it is access to decent blue-collar jobs or other resources. This can create friction.

It should, though, create teamwork. The “divide and conquer” strategy seems to be in play at times when wedges are driven between the Hispanic and African-American communities. They should be working together to obtain better jobs, educational opportunities, housing and health care.

Many Native American Indians have very substandard resources and opportunities too.

And, we might want to remember that the majority of poor and underprivileged Americans, adults and children, are white.

An interesting development in the ongoing discussions about Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigration is that two states with two of the largest populations of Native American Indians, Oklahoma and Arizona, have recently passed some of the toughest anti-immigrant laws in the country.

Isn’t it interesting that many Hispanic, Mexican and other immigrants from south of Mexico are of part-Native American Indians and part Spanish ancestry. They have darker skin, like Indians of North America. They have straight black hair and some of the facial characteristics of North American Indians.

And at the same time, Oklahoma and Arizona passed some of the most stringent laws against these immigrants. This just seems like an interesting dynamic.

After all, let’s not forget, amid all the talk about securing our borders and saving the English language from destruction, it is probably safe to say that some people just don´t like others who have different color skin, who look different, speak in a different way and have different cultural and social characteristics.

The ethnic factors in play seem to need a fresh perspective from many of us.

Whether the ongoing presidential race is focusing on the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the multi- and mixed-ethnicity of Americans or the other issues of the day, it might be helpful to look carefully and objectively at all the elements involved.

Americans do face dangers from enemies, foreign and domestic. Our democracy, our freedoms, our Constitution and our peace and prosperity are at risk.

As we select our next president and other federal, state and local government officials, our wisdom and intelligence, or lack thereof, can have very serious consequences, as we have seen in recent years.

Tags: clintons, empire, Global, governing, government, imperialism, politics, Steve Hammons
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An Article by:

Ben Tanosborn

I no longer care how popular the voting concert is, I refuse to pay homage to those untalented, tone deaf rockers!  Every four years we are regaled with the very same quadrennial political tour, the same Evil Brothers, whatever names they may go by this time around, giving us the misconception that there is political choice in our lives.

Sorry, folks, but I have had it with those two brothers engendered by an incestuous relationship. Greater and Lesser, as far as this writer is concerned, although not twins, carry almost identical DNA’s.  And it is precisely our covering up for all of Lesser’s misgivings, election after election, that we are where we are – politically – today.  After the snow dust settled in Iowa’s caucuses and New Hampshire came undone, I finally made an irrevocable resolution, not just for the New Year but one to honor for a lifetime: Never again!  Never again will I be shamed into voting for that lesser evil candidate – or party; for evil, of any kind, does not deserve anyone’s vote, certainly not mine.

While America’s Fuehrer tours the palaces of his moneyed-buddies in the Middle East, ranting incessantly – and stupidly – about Iran… and the inconceivable and “personal” promise of regional peace, the present Democratic pretenders to the Pennsylvania Avenue domicile, who also anticipate dominance over a Reichstag just a short jog away, deliver soft blows at each other as if all these non-sense, non-issues really meant anything.  Anything relevant, that is, to the chaotic economic and foreign policies that define the sorry state of our nation these days!  And these babbling pretenders under the banner of change are throwing barbs at one another without the slightest clue as to what “change” should be.  Obama and Clinton, a total disgrace, yet it’s likely that one or the other, maybe even both, will adorn the Democratic ticket for this naught-eight.  Ugh!  Lesser evil, anyone… to whatever these Republicans will try to concoct in their wrongly rightist ways?

As in the past, it is America’s media “aiding” in the decision as to what politicians make the acceptability cut, and for Democrats, whatever the reasons, people like Biden, Dodd and Richardson never had a chance.  And the Press made sure that Kucinich’s peace message was kept as short as his physical stature.  So from the very start it was just a beauty contest with three semi-finalists: Clinton, Edwards and Obama.  And now, to make it more interesting – in the tradition of American Idol – it’s beginning to look as if the media judges have decided that Edwards is beginning to look too angry, maybe too controversial for our “centrist” politics.  So it’s down to Obama and Clinton, Clinton and Obama… the man who can deliver a spirited message from the pulpit, just like an emotive evangelical preacher, but who to date has not shown us any “beef”; and that warrior, bionic woman who could have the White House renamed the Clinton House if she were to add two terms to her husband’s.  America’s centrists both… from the center of America’s corporate money!

And the only hope and compromise for American progressives that Edwards’ candidacy might represent appears to be gone.  Edwards is by no means what many of us would consider a true progressive candidate, but he seems trustworthy enough to help change the direction of America, domestically and internationally, and not just talk about it.  No sacrilegious talk (on peace) like that expressed by Hillary, after her victory in New Hampshire that would have us leave Iraq only under the proper conditions… definitely the language one would expect from a transvestite Dubya.

Of course, Iraq has ceased to be Americans’ main concern, and now the headlines are starting to tell us that voters are far, far more worried about the economy than any war; naturally, as long as it is waged elsewhere.  And the economic bloodbath soon to come in snowballing fashion, unstoppable by any so-called economic stimuli – which would entail additional borrowing from our already bankrupted future generations and nothing but a temporary postponement of the inevitable – will uncover a third stage of a cancer that has been with American society for too long: we consume, or waste in unnecessary weaponry, far more than we produce… and we elect government leadership that enable us to do so.

Only thing that the Democratic Party presumably had going all these years, as stupidly as it sounds if you believe it, was having a “big umbrella” for diversity.  Except that when it came to the moment of truth, those who advocated social justice, domestically, and peace in the world, were never represented in the party.  They had neither voice nor vote.  Yet, at election time, the Democratic Party apparatiks would always come to that 5 to 10 percent of progressive voters, asking us with a sardonic smile to vote for them… the Lesser Evil!  And most of us have succumbed to that totally flawed rationale.

Had progressives stood firm to their convictions during the past quarter of a century, and had organized as a true “umbrella party” to the many advocacies for a better and more just and peaceful society – even if small in numbers – this 2008 presidential election could have turned out to be one to really change America.  Instead, we’ll have an election where our citizenry is insulted once again… with more of the same.

If anyone approaches me prior to the November 4 election sermonizing why I need to vote once again for “Lesser Evil” my answer will be fulminatory and terminal, and I will say it without fear of remorse: Go f… yourself!

Tags: Ben Tanosborn, big brother, democracy, empire, fascism, foreign policy, Global, government, homeland security, imperialism
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Being reflective; personally taking stock of a situation, or issue, seems to be antonymic to the nature of most people who prefer that matters be handled by leaders of groups they belong to.  Whether the issue is government, war, crime, drug-addiction, or most anything else, they are quick to pass the buck, determining that it really isn’t up to them to take stock… with that 50’s mentality that “father knows best.”  And as a year comes to an end, instead of personally taking stock and weighing what is happening to their nation, Americans’ choice is to keep the mind relaxed and let the President tell them in January’s State of the Union speech “how things really are.”  Let the lies and b-s roll!

My background as a business counselor compels me to help close this 2007 calendar year with a socio-economic and political statement of “profit and loss;” its bottom line soon to be incorporated into a balance sheet that will give us a snapshot of what we, the stockholders of the Empire, hold as equity entering 2008.

Before we look at the revenue and expense components of America’s P&L, we should take a look at that bottom line, which to no one’s surprise appears as the blood-spilling continuation of embarrassing failures for the seventh straight year, courtesy of the most incompetent management team ever to run the Empire.  Our nation has been piling up losses during this time in such a spendthrift and indurate way to the point all retained success built into the balance sheet throughout the years has been now wiped out, and the losses are already eating away into our investment, our until now untouched legacy of democratic capital.  Bush has succeeded not only in mismanaging the nation’s affairs but he is recklessly leading us into un-chaptered political bankruptcy… sure to happen by the time a new same-old-face president is inaugurated in January 2009.

Few years as this 2007 have brought the United States so little in political and socio-economic revenue, either foreign or domestic.  In the domestic front there was little the government would provide via judicial determinations by the tilted-right Supreme Court (evidenced by the partial abortion and a half dozen other rulings); or needed legislation from Congress; or any constructive leadership by the White House and its appendage, the Pentagon.  Although both houses of Congress were controlled by the lesser-evil party, they could not muster the votes to overrule a veto-happy Bush, whether on issues of war or even providing healthcare for the nation’s children.  It would be difficult to come up with just one significant thing that could be construed as something of value for the nation as a whole coming from any of the three branches of government.

As far as revenue from foreign policy investments, which have been mostly made in the currency of war and threats to other nations, one could hardly expect positive returns.  There was a lower count of dead Americans in Iraq – the only ones we care to count – attributed to the military surge, and little else.  One cannot think of any dividends from foreign sources that could add economic, military, social, or political value to the P&L.  Even in the area of global warming, we antagonized the entire world, losing at year’s end the support of the other Kyoto non-signer, Australia.  A final tally of foreign and domestic accomplishments (revenues) yields nothing but a big fat zero.

Ah!  But if our successes were few or inexistent, our failures can be measured in grand scale, both internationally and domestically.  Our expenses reached levels we would expect from a teenager at the mall having a credit car with “no limit” stamped on all four corners.  Monetarily, our insatiable borrowing, not only from the savings of people in other countries but from our own future generations, reached a level not only difficult to understand mathematically, but impossible to accept morally.  And our dysfunctional, make-believe, consumption-driven economy has brought the nation to the edge of the precipice, with overvalued assets in both real estate and stock market to a figure now approaching the nation’s entire annual GDP of over US$13 trillion.

Little needs to be said about our overseas failures, not just in the Middle East, where we have erred miserably in an unjustified and chimeric pseudo-protection of Israel, but everywhere else as well.  After seven years of trying, Bush finally succeeded in making Russia once again a potential enemy of the US, instead of a friend and partner in seeking harmony for the world.  And the tally of potential enemies, and disappointed friends, grows as nations in both Africa and Latin America no longer see a mutuality of interests between the United States and themselves.

One could easily conclude that the US government is not only coldhearted towards the peoples of the world, but cares little about its own citizenry, its interest being solely in self-perpetuating its power, and the financial welfare of a select-few who control the lion’s share of wealth and power, in America and elsewhere where capitalism flourishes.

This exiting 2007 was for me one more session for Bush et al to chisel at the shrinking equity that Americans have in America; a year in which a mendacious government continued  whittling away on those unalienable rights of man, stated in our Constitution as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

For years we have observed how social and political events have taken place in this nation clearly pushing it towards the path of fascism, American fascism; real fascism, but rooted in this United States; a fascism different from Hitler’s, or Mussolini’s or even Franco’s, but fascism nonetheless. These days, our own NS-Frauenschaft provides the nation with fascist whores who trot with impunity up and down Main Street, anywhere in this land of ours, dressed in vibrant, patriotic red-white-and-blue colors; dollar-stars in their eyes; silver crosses as pendants; and, yes, unabashedly toting bibles.  Our Lady Liberty has now been replaced by replicas of a fascist libertine; a libertine venerated as the immaculate virgin-mother of corporate, military and evangelical America.

Yet, with such clarity provided by this year’s socio-economic and political statement, Americans remain undeterred, meekly consenting to everything the government puts on their plates, eating their soylent green as if it were the greatest gourmet delicacy.

© 2007 Ben Tanosborn

www.tanosborn.com

Tags: congress, democracy, economics, empire, Global, government, history, imperialism
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Time Magazine, in their annual declaration of the individual that qualifies as the most influential person of the year, cited Ron Paul, not as the most influential, but as a person worthy of mention. However, in the brief description of Ron Paul and his political advocacies, Time Magazine incorrectly portrayed Paul as an isolationist when it comes to foreign policy:

Booed by Republicans for his [bold face added to original text] isolationist foreign policy views and anathema to Democrats for his anti-government philosophy, the Texas congressman was proudly out of step with both political parties. But marching to his own drummer, the grandfatherly libertarian found himself leading an online parade. Millions of dollars poured into his quixotic presidential campaign, raising an inevitable question: What’s next for this free-thinking and strangely compelling grassroots crusader?

This characterization of Paul is patently false, and Time Magazine needs to correct its erroneous description of Ron Paul and his political positions.

In actuality, Ron Paul is a non-interventionist; which is certainly a marked distinction from the foreign policy philosophy of an isolationist. Ron Paul does not want America to look inward, not taking an interest and a role in geopolitical affairs. Rather, Paul is opposed to a foreign policy that is modeled upon an international activist programme, whereby America feels obliged to intervene in the domestic affairs of other countries, even if through military force.

We have suffered – for the last 6 years – under a Presidential regime that has acted belligerently toward other nations, and has, indeed, militarily invaded non-aggressor states in order to install regimes that are favorable to the United States. It is precisely this militarism, which is the hallmark of the Bush Administration, to which Ron Paul is opposed.

Please inform the Time Magazine associate responsible for writing this description of Ron Paul that you take exception to his erroneous characterization of Ron Paul’s foreign policy philosophy.

Please consider writing to the editor, in order to ensure that Time Magazine makes a correction to its incorrect portrayal of Ron Paul.  You can find the mistatement regarding Ron Paul at the following uri:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/article/0,28804,1690753_1690758_1693558,00.html

Russell Cole

Tags: foreign policy, Global, government, imperialism, military, neoconservatism, politics, war
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An Article by:

Ben Tanosborn

America, more than anything else, more than the proverbial land of opportunity, is very definitely something else. This nation of ours appears to be, first and foremost, a land of contradictions where, while the polls indicate most people feel the nation is being led in the wrong direction, we seem inclined to follow the same pied piper foreign policy.

Like it or not, in the US you cease to be an American (or rather, a “good American”) in the mind of your family, friends and neighbors the moment you deny the sacred dogma of inerrancy in US foreign policy. It may seem irrational to some people – either the statement on its face or what it’s implied by it – but deep inside that is the attitudinal belief of a vast majority of Americans I know and, I would venture to guess, most Americans anyone might know. And yet, that “patriotic majority,” so similar to me to the “moral majority” of time past, prefer not to think of themselves in any way, shape or form as nativists, jingoists, or otherwise exclusionary… convinced they are just down-to-earth regular folks: Main Street America.

Shortly after 9/11, political America – Democrats and Republicans – decided that it was about time to set aside their minute differences in foreign policy and act as a true united front. After all, they could always maintain some semblance of independence in the domestic arena, keeping a presumed differentiation alive and well… as if the gross mislabeling of the conservative and liberal captions defined how either party stood.

To our national detriment, including America’s standing in the world, such unnecessary and unwarranted united front was adopted by our political duopoly without as much as the blink of an eye; its ideas quickly permeating, and finding acceptance, through much of the citizenry of Main Street America. That citizen’s consent to relinquish rights and freedoms, giving blind permission, authorization, license and sanction allowing Bush’s White House to do as it pleased – all too often in open acts of criminality – has made it starkly clear that even if we claim to live under democratic rule, a so-called rule of law, our republic operates under a much different rule: the rule of consentership. And we, the citizenry, are simply the consenters! Such role reversal has made Americans the doting citizens of their uncle, Sam, an embarrassingly felonious uncle at that.

Let’s stop being hypocrites! Let’s stop blaming Bush for our own cowardice and lack of civic guts. Empowering a selected – not elected – government; granting clearance for the neocons to act; giving Bush the green light to invade Iraq; tolerating the usurping of our rights and freedoms; and going along with blatant economic malfeasance that is sure to bankrupt this nation, is unmistakably defining the highest level of consentership: what some of us would call the ultimate political pass.

Could it be that we are consenting because that is exactly what we want? That deep inside we know that someone needs to do the dirty work on our behalf, and that there needs to be a price paid? Are we really accomplices as much as we are consenters? Isn’t this a form of a dictatorship by that antidemocratic triumvirate that rules our lives: predatory capitalism, wasteful consumerism, and religious fundamentalism?

It’s beginning to look as if in early 2008, consentership will continue to dominate our Tweedledum-Tweedledee politics with Republicans and Democrats achieving renewed solidarity in foreign affairs, be it the forever-occupation (or negotiated presence) of Iraq, a non-stop continuing demonization of Iran and other “terror-villains,” or the constant denunciation of any nation that challenges our imperial hegemony and right to collect tribute in any way we see fit. Bush will soon be on his way out, but rest assured that his replacement will be a clone; or, as it is now starting to look, “a Bush in drag.” Perhaps we continue to be led astray with the promise of a lesser evil approach in domestic governance, but it will not be a lesser evil in the areas that are essential to bring trusting understanding among peoples of the world; it will not be a recipe to achieve peace on this earth, just as the organic compounds were to achieve life.

Of late, we have been looking at what is happening in Greater Russia, and are totally befuddled by the confrontational attitude of Mr. Putin. A man that not so long ago our own Duce, after looking into his eyes, tabbed as his straightforward, trustworthy friend Vladimir. My God, can someone explain how our prophetic, infallible Bush was able to get a sense of Putin’s soul and just a few years later have him turn against us?

But we shouldn’t fret over Putin’s reaction to our accustomed imperialist behavior, nor should we be surprised at his popularity in Greater Russia. Just like here in the US, there is also an apparent consensus in the neo-czarist land of Vladimir Putin, with an overwhelming majority matching their consentership against our very own. If we can be bipartisan in adopting – preserving might be a more appropriate word – an imperial foreign policy, it’s understandable that the Russians’ newly found economic success and national pride have turned their political behavior into one of consentership. The US should not expect anything better after our “screw-you” behavior during their cold turkey exit from communism, and now our insolence of trying to park missiles at their borders.

Consentership may not be dangerously consequential for small groups or nations that have no influence beyond their memberships or borders. For an imperial superpower it can turn out to be the most extreme among political extremes, perhaps the worst form of dictatorship. After all, we are consenting to the rule of a very few… and those few have been granted the power to push the nuclear button at will, to turn daylight into permanent night.

And we have the gall to criticize some nations because we tag them as dictatorships!

© 2007 Ben Tanosborn

Tags: american empire, anti imperialism, bush, citizens, democracy, economics, empire, Global, imperialism, liberty, National, political parties, politics
Categories: Commentary, National, Economics, Democracy, liberty, Politics, Empire, Imperialism
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As the Populist Party of America grows in size, we are faced with some challenging obstacles and difficult decisions to make regarding the future of the Party: i.e., What type of structure should be given to the Populist Party of America? Should we strive for a strong national organization? Or, contrarily, should we stress decentralization, choosing to focus on the development of state and local parties without any overbearing emphasis placed upon the integration of the various pockets of Populist America into a monolithic formation? Thus far, I have been exposed to two contrasting visions for the future organization of the Party, as it continues to grow in size.

There is an argument that maintains the necessity of an organization to possess some kind of integrated structure, which would include members who would participate in planning and problem solving. This managerial core would contribute to the development of different actionable plans that could later be introduced to the membership at large, providing some options that have already been delineated, from which the membership might select to adopt and implement as a Party platform. This proposal calling for the Party to possess a kernel, consisting of more active members, who would be inclined to offer centralized planning for the Party as a whole, stands in stark opposition to the other conception for the appropriate structuring of the Party, as it continues to expand.

This proposed design for the Party - which stands in opposition to proposals for centralization - would not provide for an organization with a centralized nervous system. Alternatively, the Party would be allowed to proliferated along lateral dimensions while failing to create an integrated hierarchy of offices.

To relate this ideology of decentralized politic to contemporary sociological literature, the jargon that has come into fashion, as a result of the studies upon the Informational Economy, which were initiated by Manuel Castells, uses the reference, Networked Politics, to designate instances of decentralized patterns of political praxis.

This new form of political mobilization often transcends the geographical boundaries imposed by states and governments. Furthermore, Networked Politics are understood as a by-product of what has been termed by Castells as Informationalism, which simply designates the technological paradigm underlying the expansion of Internet communicative infrastructures. However, the type of sociopolitical opposition that is formed through the networking of diverse agents and groups via the communication channels provided for by the Web - despite the transnational character of these network configurations - fails to negate the embodiment of geographical locality and the coalescence of interests among advocates who reside in physical proximity to one another; thus, allowing for embodied interaction.

This condition, where localized concerns are situated and understood in the context of larger geo-economic and geopolitical social forces, has been referenced under the neologism, glocalization. This concept fits in well with the social theoretical framework that has been introduced by Castells, who discards with the global democracy thesis propounded by Habermas and Rorty - which was founded upon the notion of a cosmopolitan culture - in favor of an understanding of the globalizing trends, facilitated by Informationalism, where multiculturalism will be preserved; only such cultural differences will become circumspect within a global forum of manifold cultural identities, who will participate in a world representational space in order to express their uniqueness as well as discover the peculiar attributes of others.

It is here, in the conception of glocalization, that I propose as a guiding post serving as an indication for the appropriate trajectory in which Populist America should transverse, as the Party enters into its future stages of development, as it continues to grow larger.

[Future installment: the concretization of glocalization in the praxes of Populist America]

Russell Cole

Tags: centralization, communications, community, decentralization, Global, government, National, politics, populist party, populist party america, Populist Party organizational structure, Social Change, society, third parties
Categories: Commentary, National, Global, Society, Populist Party, government, Decentralization, Politics, Third Parties, Social Change
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For those of us who have had considerable doubts as to the veracity of the latest claims coming from the Bush Administration and the select members of the Military Generalship, who serve as the Administration’s proxies, regarding the current success of the “Surge,” in Iraq, I can assure you that your cynicism is well founded.

As was reported in the Washington Post on Sunday, August 5th * - the Bush Administration has been less than candid and, in fact, deceitful with respect to the current, “Surge;” not to mention every other aspect of their conduct in the Executive Branch of Government. As it turns out, the reduction of violence in Iraq, which the Generalship has attributed to the cooperation of local tribal leaders, is certainly not the consequence of the American Military forging alliances with organic elements in the Iraqi population; instead, we have merely been arming as well as bribing Sunni sections of the Baghdad population, in order to entice them into suppressing the violence in the neighborhoods in which they have influence, which I suspect to be a social dynamic comparable to the power wielded by a warlord, or something along those lines.

* http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/080407A.shtml

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As to whether the local tribal leaders are, indeed, turning against al-Qaeda is an issue that remains unresolved, due to the ambiguities resulting from the morphing semantics with which the lexicon, al-Qaeda, has been endowed on occasions involving various circumstances, in which the expression has been appropriated for purposes of political expediency.

Therefore, the banner, al-Qaeda, has been deployed in modes not keeping with conventions or standards of veracity or consistency; other than a congruency resulting from the Administration’s relentless introduction of the phrase, al-Qaeda, into public discourse every opportunity that the Administration gets. In fact, since the Bush Administration uses this label to depict nearly every instance of insurgent or terrorist violence, it is probably better at this point to discard with the term, al-Qaeda, altogether. The significance of the expression has been so depreciated that its continued invocation might result in an inadvertent contribution to the persistent and over arching disinformation campaign being waged by the Bush Administration upon the American public.

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Interestingly, however, there is more to this scenario with respect to the larger political dimensions compelling these unruly and unpredictable flows and collisions of human interaction in Iraq. Assuming one has not been living in cave - or, to qualify: a cave that is unlike the one inhabited by Bin Laden, which, apparently, is furnished with the necessary technology to keep abreast of recent events as well as producing an occasional press release; not to mention the medical equipment necessary for kidney dialysis - he or she should be well aware of the parliamentary stagnation that is preventing Iraqi sectional reconciliation.

The indications of discontent among the Shiites in Iraq’s Parliament - who, despite the pressures placed upon it by the American Embassy, went on recess during the month of August - point to the fact that the American Generalship is actively arming Sunni sections of the Iraqi population. For the Shiites, this amounts to nothing less than an existential threat. We must not forget that the battles being waged by Sunni organic elements upon, ‘al-Qaeda,’ are occurring within the context of a lager conflict: the Iraqi Civil War, which amounts to a conflict drawn along the lines Islamic sectarianism - the Sunni and the Shiites.

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With the aforementioned considerations in mind, it is nearly unimaginable how the current policies in Iraq - which, granted, might be quelling violence to some degree in the streets of Baghdad - could possible lead to a larger political accomplishment, where the sections of Iraq came to a consensus, forming some treaty upon which the future organization of the country could be based.

Sadly, in my own opinion, this surge - similarly to every other strategy undertaken in Iraq and, let us be frank, in the, ‘War on Terror:’ another expression that is literally void of substantive meaning - is just another folly in a long chain of mishaps that are metaphorically comparable to the treatment of walking pneumonia with opiates: the pain might subside as the patient’s illness intensifies.

Russell Cole

Tags: foreign policy, Global, media, politics, Terrorism, war
Categories: Commentary, Global, Politics, War, Media, Terrorism, Foreign Policy
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An Article by Ben Tanosborn

This last junket by Bush may have been considered a tour de force for US relations with Latin America, but it wasn’t much of a tour and definitely provided no feat; in fact, it was a total waste. Uruguay’s and Brazil’s heads of state, both in the opposite side of the political spectrum from Bush, were forced to appear diplomatically courteous, probably wondering why Condi Rice had cast them to play in this five-act farce. The stops in Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico did make a lot more sense since those nations are major suppliers for America’s top two illicit addictions: drugs and immigration. Uribe (Colombia) and Calderon (Mexico) have a good compa in Bush. Not the other leaders.

It was a meaningless trip for a meaningless dignitary to an already lost part of the world (in terms of special, neighborly relations). Latin Americans, at least the 80 percent who are dirt-poor, have realized that the US has never been their friend, only a detached stepmother; and that any future overtures probably carry price tags they can ill afford.

Why would the United States help Latin America? it never has! For a century all the programs and money invested in the Iberian Down Under have been either minuscule (programs) or have had exploitative results (investments). To hear Bush speak and say that the $1.6 billion sent last year went for ’social justice’ causes is going from the ridiculous (the small amount) to the sublime (stating that it was for worthwhile causes), back to the ridiculous (as most of those funds were used for military purposes to fight the FARC guerrillas in Colombia, or for the interdiction of drugs). In fact, Venezuela with a population one-twelfth that of the United States provided last year far more help to the people of Latin America, when you add the price breaks on oil to the direct aid, than the US. So stop the on-going deceit, Mr. President, social justice causes, you say?

But even if America of the North has never felt compelled to help the America to the South, it recognizes that the Latin folks play key roles in the USL: two great addictions. For better or for worse the Latin and Anglo parts of the hemisphere are linked in many ways; and that’s a fact that politicians there and here know quite well.

Politicians who proselytize supply-side economics have played working Americans for suckers for over a quarter of a century with their trickled-down economics. But, what’s just as bad is that politicians who refuse to acknowledge our demand-side realities have played all Americans for suckers twice that long. Republicans and Democrats, both!

We have been ‘at war’ with those who supply illicit drugs to our population for more than two generations, failing to admit that drug-addiction is mainly a demand problem, not supply. Having a Drug Czar and our war on drugs to defend our purity has been but a crock. If we stop being hypocrites and call a spade a spade, our level of success with this biological-social problem would be far greater domestically - at a much lower cost - and we wouldn’t have to cause so many problems to nations in Latin America that supply us. This is an issue where most intelligent people, capitalists or anarchists alike, would find total agreement: that it is nonsensical to treat the alcohol-drugs problem as criminality. But politicians have preferred to keep their eyes closed to this reality.

And, in a similar fashion, politicians have also decided to keep their eyes closed to the other domestic reality, one that now dominates the American landscape: undocumented or illegal immigration (adjective to be used depending on how you view the subject). Why? For the simple reason that this form of immigration is also an addiction, one that needs to be tackled from the demand, not the supply side. Again, just like the illicit drugs issue, it should not be treated as criminality. In both cases we need to quell or treat the demand with appropriate legislation that addresses all humane and social aspects, not just economic and political.

Americans’ addiction to undocumented labor is not just restricted to businesses but also the greedy side of the average Joe and Jane. Our anarchical state on the issue of illicit immigration is everyone’s fault, not just politicians of the right, or the other politicians of the lesser-right. The problem has been around for decades, was poorly addressed two decades ago, and now has become a monster that scares us all; a dragon that people demand be slain, calling for that knight, Jingo, and squires like Lou Dobbs and Patrick Buchanan to rid us of it once and for all, so that we may keep our whored virginity intact.

On his last stop in Mexico, Bush was admonished by that country’s recently elected (or not, according to his leftist challenger) mandatary that building a wall along the border is not the answer to stop his countrymen from crossing over. And Calderon is quite right about that. The US with its addiction has created an addiction for that country as well, as $20-30 billion are sent by the immigrants to their families in Mexico every year, the second largest source of revenue for that nation after the Almighty Crude.

A social worker friend, whose maternal grandparents had crossed the border illegally from Mexico in the 1950’s, told me last year - I assume it was in jest - that if the US really wanted to solve this crisis, not just for us but for the Latinos as well, we should round up all able-bodied undocumented workers and give them some Al-Qaeda type of training for six or eight weeks, then send them back to their countries of origin with an AK-47 in their hands, and a promise that the US would help once they mow down their corrupt governments. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this nation neither funds nor gives its imprimatur to revolutions by the oppressed; it’s only the oppressors we help. It’s the nature of predatory capitalism - how many times must we be told!

As for America’s two great addictions, we’ll continue to do little or nothing, blaming - as always - the supply-side.

© 2007 Ben Tanosborn [send him email]
www.tanosborn.com

Tags: bush, Drug War, drugs, empire, foreign policy, Global, immigration, latin america
Categories: Commentary, Global, Empire, Foreign Policy, Drug War
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